Our trip was great – Grande Prairie to Virden, MB and back – 2 1/2 weeks driving: 4,335 kilometres.

Heber’s 3 Grande Prairie homesteads were fun to find, but basically open prairie – no sign of buildings.

 

We found a historical marker for the Prisoner-of-war camp, just outside of Jasper that Grampa guarded from January to March of 1916.

(View from the camp – not so “harsh” 100 years later eh?)

 

 

A newspaper report from the time described the duties as “very hard” and as a result, 3 of the guards from Edmonton who had previously come home from the war had been discharged as unfit. Given Grampa’s previous medical discharge, he was probably one of the three, since the camp, which was a road-building crew, continued until August and Grampa’s war record says he was discharged from the camp in March.  As in all of the First War internment camps, the prisoners were Canadian residents deemed “enemy aliens”, primarily Ukrainians, who probably had homesteaded in Saskatchewan some 50 years before Grampa did.  The irony is amazing!

 

 

Our next stop was in Kerrobert, SK, near where we visited 2 homestead lands which had been applied for by Frederick on behalf of Heber and Asher. (Brotherly love eh?). There are no records of them actually homesteading these properties, and it’s very unlikely they ever saw them. The fact that these were a couple of miles apart shows that they had some sort of  plan together.

 

We then went to Virden Manitoba to see the grave of my Paternal great grandfather: Elijah Wilcox and the department store that his son founded in the 1880s. W.J. Wilcox later emigrated to Salmon Arm in 1906 (Asthma concerns) and pioneered the growing of wine grapes.

(Photos of the store from the 1890s)

 

 

The biggest thrill of the trip was on Oct. 30 when we visited Weyburn, where my dad was born, and Estevan where my his father William Arthur More, an International Harvester salesman died tragically before the family moved to Salmon Arm to be with Gramma Effie More’s Brother Will (W.J.)

 

On that day, we decided to search for Asher’s homestead, where records show he lived with his wife Mary from about 1910 to 1930, before they moved to Surrey.  This time we were ecstatic to find the buildings, and farm equipment still there after 100 years. We had been on the land  for about a half hour, finding nothing much, when we saw a group of trees in the distance (top photo) and as we walked closer we saw the astounding relics left by our Great-Uncle and Aunt at the begining of the depression.

 

 

To give you an idea of how hidden the house area was,  I’ve included a satellite overview of the whole section and a zoom-in to the house surrounded by trees.